Rivers Assembly Demands Arrest of PAMO University Vice Chancellor

The Rivers State House of Assembly has issued an arrest warrant for Professor Smith I. Jaja, the Vice Chancellor of PAMO University of Medical Sciences, due to his repeated non-appearance before an ad hoc committee investigating the management and disbursement of scholarship funds allocated to the university.

The committee, chaired by Dumle Maol, had invited Jaja multiple times to explain the utilization of over ₦29 billion received from the Rivers State Government through the scholarship scheme. During the investigation, discrepancies were noted between the funds released and the number of students enrolled.

The Assembly directed the establishment of a funds recovery committee to ascertain unaccounted funds and recover any outstanding amounts from PAMO University, with recovered funds to be returned to the state’s Consolidated Revenue Account. Speaker Martin Chike Amaewhule expressed concerns over inconsistencies in financial records from the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, and the Office of the Accountant-General, revealing that only about ₦5 billion of the released funds could be traced.